I really love this glass and had some scrap left over from another project. I came up with this cute little glass bowl using two layers of clear glass behind the colorful glass.

As most fused glass artists know, there are so many scraps left over from other projects. I am running out of room in my small basement for all the glass that I buy and what do I do with all my scraps? I like to keep track of the color of the glass and I have to keep track of whether it is 90 or 96.

Anyone have any great ideas to keep track of the small amounts of scrap glass?

I used dichroic glass to make these gorgeous glass earrings. Once these glass earrings were finished, I decided to use gold filled bails and gold filled earwires. Most of the time I use sterling silver findings, but the colors in these glass earrings needed gold.

I did some grinding on these glass earrings to get a nice shape and to get them to match each other as well as possible. Grinding small pieces of glass really does a number on my nails. I think I grind more of my nails than glass 🙂 It does take a lot of work to grind small pieces, but it is worth it.

I found the grey swirl glass at Bullseye Glass when we were there shopping for glass. I thought the glas was very pretty. I decided to cut some of it up into 2″ square pieces to fuse onto two layers of clear glass with black borders. Unfortunately, when I fused it, devitrification started to occur on the clear and grey glass. I contacted Bullseye to see what was going on. After several emails back and forth, they told me that I was not using the correct glass cleaner, like Spartan Glass Cleaner available in their store. I forgot to buy some when we were there last time, but I changed to a glass cleaner called Glass Plus.

I sanded off the devit. from this glass plate with pads that have different size diamonds pieces on them. I started off with the coarsest pad and moved down to the finest. Once I had all the devit. removed, I fire polished the glass plate and it came out perfect! I slumped it into one of my glass plate molds. I am so glad it all worked.

Now I am learning to use Bullseye’s recommendations for cleaning the glass correctly. Just check out their website. They have lots of information about all aspects of fusing.

Let me know if you have any questions or comments. I’d love to hear from you.

I love these glass earrings. These glass earrings didn’t start out like this. I think they were square when I first made these. After the first firing, the glass earrings needed to be ground, so they were the same size. While I was grinding them, I decided to make them round. I haven’t made many round hanging glass earrings, but since I liked these so well, I have been making more round glass earrings.

David, my husband, is going to explain his Broken Hearts series of glass plates.

Well, obviously, the glass plate “was broken”. For each of the glass plates in my Broken Hearts series, I took the red sheet of glass and shattered it with a hammer. Each break is unique and I love finding out what the pieces will look like when I open the newspaper. I then spread it out over a contrasting color (black, in this case) and fuse them together. In the end, I cover it with a sheet of clear and we slump it into a glass plate mold.

I call it “Broken Hearts” because I started with red and black glass, and it reminded me of a real heart, and the blood vessels going out from it. In addition, each time I accidentally break a piece of glass, I find it frustrating and it “breaks my heart”, especially if it was a large piece, LOL. Well, more scrap for the frit pile, Christine would say. To intentionally break a piece of glass sometimes seems wrong, but the interesting fractures that result make it worth the “crime” 🙂

Ever since I got my new large ceramic kiln with the controller, I have wanted to make this type of glass vase. It took me awhile to fuse the glass vase, because I didn’t want to fire it until I knew how my new kiln fired. Basically, I didn’t want to ruin it somehow.

It turned out just like I wanted it to, however, my husband and I had a hard time removing it from the cone that I draped it over. After an unsuccessful time of trying to get it off, I soaked the glass vase in water for a couple of days until we got around to trying it again. It still wouldn’t come off — ugghhh…

So, my husband got out the rubber mallets and very carefully tapped on the glass vase and then turned it a little and tapped again. I think the glass vase came off after three taps!!! Yeah!! And nothing broke 🙂

I use two layers of thin fire paper inbetween the mold and the glass, but parts of the glass had hugged the mold so much that the paper didn’t even disintegrate in the water. I was very, very lucky!

Yesterday, I slumped another 10″ high Grape Glass Vase with white opal lace. Since the glass had five layers of glass fused together, I had to go very slow in the heat up and cool down phases. It is still cooling down, so I can’t look at it right now.

From looking at it when it was slumping, there is a slight bulge at the bottom. I didn’t open the kiln slightly to cool the kiln enough to stop the glass from moving. I was trying to figure out a new firing schedule, because I had to stop the soak earlier than I had entered into the firing schedule. I think it will be fine, though. It gives the glass vase some character.

I need to fuse three layers of round glass to serve as a base for the glass vase. After that, I will tack fuse the base to the glass vase to give the vase more stability. I don’t have a picture of it yet, but I made one of these glass vases a few months ago and posted it to this blog. The only difference is that the glass vase is grape instead of light purple.